There is considerable interest, world-wide, in producing chemical feedstocks such as fatty acids for industrial use from renewable plant resources rather than from non-renewable petrochemicals. This concept has broad appeal for both manufacturers and consumers on the basis of resource conservation and in addition provides significant opportunities to develop new industrial crops for agriculture.
There is an enormous diversity of unusual fatty acids in oils from wild plant species which have been well characterized (see e.g. Badami & Patil, 1981). Many of these acids are of potential industrial use. This has lead to an interest in domesticating relevant plant species to enable the agricultural production of particular fatty acids. However the development of genetic engineering combined with a greater understanding of the biosynthesis of unusual fatty acids make it now possible to transfer genes coding for key enzymes, involved in the synthesis of a particular fatty acid from a wild species, to a choosen domesticated oilseed crop. In this way specific fatty acids can be produced in high purity and quantities at moderate costs.
One class of fatty acids of particular interest are the acetylenic fatty acids; consisting of an acyl chain having two adjacent carbon atoms linked by an acetylenic or triple bond. Because of their high reactivities they may be ideally suited for the production of coatings, plastics and lubricants. By transferring the genes responsible for the production of a specific acetylenic acid from a wild species to commercial oilseeds, or any other oil accumulating organism that can be easily multiplied, it should be possible to develop a renewable primary source of this oil containing acetylenic fatty acids for industrial uses.